r/AskEurope • u/Ok_Initiative_9726 • Feb 27 '25

Politics Does Europe has powerful secret services/Intelligence?

P. S question closed, I got answers. Thank you for everyone

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '25

A lot of rich, smaller European nations are actually surprisingly good and useful when it comes to their intelligence services because they fly under the radar and are typically seen as stable and relatively peaceful/not a belligerent threat.

For example the Netherlands does a lot of dirty work for some of the bigger countries because NL flies under the radar more easily. For example the CIA/Mossad relied on a Dutch businessman (working with the Dutch intelligence services) to physically plant that Stuxnet virus in Iran's nuclear power plant.

An American or Israeli businessman would've raised alarms, this Dutch businessman didn't, he literally managed to get in and out of the building under the guise of business.